Retirement == Freedom

I have been retired for 7 or 8 months now and I think I am starting to get used to the new life.  Recently I have started feeling more energetic about programming.  It is different now.  In the past I was either working on a project with a specific goal in mind or generally too busy to focus on new programming projects.

Now don't get me wrong I have done some interesting, fun things as parts of several projects during the last 5 years at USM.  The difference is one of degree.  Over the years I would explore interesting things for fun, but the unpaid projects were usually somewhat small.  Now whatever I decide to do is my choice and I can generally decide when to work on it.


I feel liberated.  I don't have to attend faculty meetings.  I don't have to be at school at specific times to teach classes.  By far the biggest liberation is getting out of the annual evaluation process.  The people I worked with were great, the faculty meetings were not extremely boring, and the people who performed the evaluations were very nice.  I just did not enjoy evaluations.  I recognize that they must be done, but there is an element of exposure involved which I did not like.

There is nothing left to prove.  Earlier in life I had to get degrees to prepare for reasonable employment.  I did that and had to take tests and write papers.  During the first 6 years at USM I was conditionally employed.  I had to pass a tenure review process to be guaranteed a long-term job.  That is such a strange way to treat employees.  Generally you can tell whether someone is worth retaining within the first few months.

Over the time since tenure the state has implemented a process of post-tenure review.  Basically it is theoretically possible for tenured professors to be fired, but I don't expect this to happen to anybody.  So I had to perform according to the expectations of a university professor.  When I started the job at USM, I was told that some people were good at research and some were good at teaching and you could be whatever you wanted and do well.  The rules never sounded that way and they kept changing.  Evaluations were largely based on papers written and funded projects.  It seldom mattered whether you or a student wrote a paper and as far as I could tell, it generally didn't matter much whether the paper was good or not-do-good.  I have to give several reviewers credit of the past 5 years or so for trying to evaluate quality in the annual process.

My intention was to be a good teacher.  Maybe I did OK some of the time, but I felt that this was not really a primary goal of the university.  So I was evaluated over and over.  I was generally evaluated as being above average, which was satisfactory to me.  I don't want to give an impression of someone who feels unappreciated.  I just didn't like the evaluation process.  I wanted to feel that I had done well enough and that evaluations were over.

Now they are over!  I have no more degrees to earn and no bosses to satisfy.  I have completed enough years of work to get past the evaluation process.  Plus I don't have to go to meetings.

Now whatever tasks I undertake are my plans.  I have written an assembly language book which lead to writing an IDE.  I decided that the original ebe was not good enough.  So I have started on a newer, better ebe.  After about 6 months of retirement I started betting adjusted to the new lifestyle and I like it.  I will work toward making ebe a great teaching tool.  I have no plans to produce a great tool to be better that Visual Studio.  My niche will be targeting beginners.  I hope to publish other books as time goes on.  Interestingly the book publishing might have been rewarded moderately well at USM, so I am now doing some of the things that people expect of professors.  Perhaps I will be a better professor after retirement.

My suggestion for anyone is to work a minimal number of years to reach a point where you can be free of employment.  For some people this means starting your own business.  For others, like me, it means keeping a steady job long enough to retire.  Post employment is freedom.  I am thankful to be capable of doing some interesting work.  I may actually make some money from it, but the money doesn't matter very much.  Now the work is its own reward.